DARPA Robotics Challenge: Meet the contenders (pictures)

Tartan Rescue of Carnegie Mellon University in the US is entering CHIMP,which took third place in the 2013 DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials. CHIMP has anear-human form factor designed for hazardous environments and is fitted with afull, 360-degree sensor suite to create a 3D model of its surroundings.

CHIMP has tank-like treads instead of feet and treads onits elbows as well. It can drive on all fours for tricky terrain, and stand up on two legs when it needs to.

Year of birth: 2012

Height: 150cm (5ft)

Weight: 201kg (443lb)

Japan's Team Aero is entering Aero DRC, a robotwith over three dozen points of articulation: seven in each arm; four in each of its four legs;three each in its waist and neck; and two in each of its two hands.

Year of birth: 2015

Height: 160cm (5.2ft)

Weight: 50kg (110lb)

HRP-2+was entered by Japan's National Institute of Industrial Science and Technology and is a member of a seriesof humanoid robots developed by the team. HRP-2+ boasts human-like bipedalmotion over rough terrain. It has the ability to lay down and get up again, fallsafely, clear a narrow passage and manipulateobjects while supporting itself with one hand. A bonus: it also performs traditional Japanese dance.

HRP-2+ is the upgraded version of the original HRP-2 builtin 2002.

Year of birth: 2002

Height: 170cm (5.6ft)

Weight: 65kg (143lb)

DRC-Hubo hailsfrom Team DRC-Hubo at the University of Las Vegas. It participated in the 2013 DARPARobotics Challenge Miami Trials. It's a full-sized humanoid robot with two legsfor bipedal locomotion and three-fingered hands for grasping.

Year of birth: 2013

Height: 175cm (5.75ft)

Weight: 80kg (176lb)

Spidery, four-legged Cog-Burn was builtby Grit Robotics, a team of undergradstudents, professors and engineers. The team was formerly known as Team Mojavaton when itparticipated in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge and the 2007 DARPA UrbanChallenge. Cog-Burn is fitted with 34 servo motors that enable it to walkaround and manipulate objects with its two arms and hands.

Year of birth: 2013

Height: 122cm (4ft)

Weight: 27kg (59lb)

Germany's Team Hectorhas made a bit of a nod to "Short Circuit" with Johnny 05in name, if not in appearance. Johnny 05 has a modular design that means itscomponents are easy to remove, repair and replace. The bipedal robot is basedon software created by DRC Team ViGIR (TORC Robotics, TU Darmstadt, VirginiaTech, Oregon State University, Cornell University and Leibniz University Hanover).Johnny 05 is based on the Thormang hardware made by South Korea's Robotis.

Year of birth: 2014

Height: 147cm (4.8ft)

Weight: 55kg (121lb)

Team HKUof Hong Kong University is entering Atlas, a bipedalrobot with one very long arm. The team specialises in robot vision, motionplanning, programming and control, human-machine interaction and robotichardware. The team is entering a tetherless version of Boston Dynamics' hydraulically powered Atlas robot.

Yeah of birth: 2015

Height: 187cm (6.1ft)

Weight: 175kg (386lb)

Team HRP-2 Tokyo ofJapan is entering the earlier version of HRP-2+, HRP-2.

Year of birth: 2003

Height: 154cm (5ft)

Weight: 60kg (132lb)

Another Atlas robot comes from the Pensacola, Fla., team IHMC Robotics of the Institute of Humanand Machine Cognition. The team has modified Running Man withits own software to make it faster, more robust and more efficient. The team'sversion of the Boston Dynamics robot has 30 degrees of freedom and third-party modularhands.

Year of birth: 2015

Height: 190cm (6.2ft)

Weight: 175kg (386lb)

Since the rules of the competition allow robots with thesame hardware to enter, so long as the software is different, there are somedouble-ups. Team KAIST of South Korea designed HUBO (HUmanoid RObot),which has been a project of the institute since 2002. The team is entering thelatest version of the robot, and has redesigned it to be more powerful andcapable. They have rewritten the walking algorithm, and the robot can also moveto a kneeling position for wheeled motion, via wheels attached to its knees.

Year of birth: 2014

Height: 180cm (5.9ft)

Weight: 80kg (176lb)

Team MIT's version ofAtlas, Helios,is a very odd-looking version of the robot, with extra-long, modified arms withdifferent grippers on each hand for completing a variety of tasks.

Year of birth: 2013

Height: 195cm (6.4ft)

Weight: 182kg (401lb)

Hydra, from Team NEDO-Hydra of Japan, is acollaborative effort across four universities. The University of Tokyodeveloped the hardware, which has 41 points of articulation. Chiba Institute ofTechnology developed the sensing, localising and visualising systems. OsakaUniversity developed locomotion and manipulation. Finally, Kobe Universitydeveloped the network and teleoperation systems.

Year of birth: 2015

Height: 180cm (5.9ft)

Weight: 110kg (242lb)

Team NEDO-JSK of the University of Tokyo's Graduate Schoolof Information Science and Technology presents JAXON, a humanoidrobot cooled by water with a high output motor drive system.

Year of birth: 2015

Height: 188cm (6.1ft)

Weight: 110kg (242lb)

Team NimbRo Rescue from the University of Bonn, Germany, departs from thebipedal model with the wheeled Momaro.Momaro runs on four compliant legs that end in pairs of directly driven,steerable wheels, which allows for omnidirectional driving on uneven terrain.To overcome higher obstacles, the individual legs can lift and climb. Therotating body on this base is equipped with two arms, each ending in fourindividually controllable fingers with two joints each. A sensor head with arotating 3D laser scanner, eight RGB-D cameras and three full HD colour camerasallow the robot to see its surroundings in detail.

Year of birth: 2015

Height: 150cm (4.9ft)

Weight: 60kg (132lb)

NASA's Jet Propulsion Labs is doing away with humanoid altogether with the RoboSimian,a modular crawling robot. It has 28 points of articulation divided among fouridentical legs for the purposes of simplifying design, fabrication andmaintenance, but the resulting platform is dextrous and customisable.

Year of birth: 2012

Height: 70cm (2.3ft)

Weight: 125kg (275lb)

South Korea's Robotisis entering Thormang 2, a faster, stronger and more stable version of the humanoid Thormangrobot the team entered in the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials.

Year of birth: 2015 for Thormang 2 and 2013 for Thormang

Height: 160cm (5.2ft)

Weight: 60kg (132lb)

Team SNU ofSouth Korea has modified a Thormang with itsown software, provided by three different laboratories at the Seoul NationalUniversity: Dynamic Robotic Systemhttp://www.theroboticsch...s Lab wrote the control algorithms, MachineIntelligence & Pattern Analysis Lab wrote the perception software andprivate company SimLab provided the software framework and interface.

Year of birth: 2014

Height: 140cm (4.6ft)

Weight: 60kg (132lb)

Team THOR is acollaboration between the Robots and Mechanisms Lab (RoMeLa) at the Universityof California, Los Angeles, and the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing andPerception Lab (GRASP) at the University of Pennsylvania. They're entering THOR-RD, a robotdesigned around the concept of user-friendliness. The humanoid robot is thereforebuilt with modular actuators and simple mechanical structures for ease of transport,deployment, operation and maintenance.

Year of birth: 2014

Height: 150cm (4.9ft)

Weight: 54kg (119lb)

Team TRACLabs of Houston,Texas is advancing to the finals with DARPA funding -- the only small businessteam, it claims, to do so. It is entering a modified version of BostonDynamics' Atlas called Hercules.

Year of Birth: 2013

Height: 190cm (6.2ft)

Weight: 180kg (397lb)

Lockheed Martin's Team Trooper,including teammates from the University of Pennsylvania and RensselaerPolytechnic Institute, is entering LEO, a BostonDynamics Atlas robot that is designed to work autonomously, contacting a human operatoronly when it requires assistance.

Year of birth: 2015

Height: 190cm (6.2ft)

Weight: 180kg (397lb)

Escher is arobot wholly designed, fabricated and assembled by Team VALOR, a team of engineeringstudents at Virginia Tech. Because it is lightweight for its size, it canoperate untethered for up to two hours. It features a multi-spectral sensorsuite for surveying its environment, and a perception system allows it toidentify obstacles and tools, which in turn allows the bipedal robot to operatesemi-autonomously.

Year of birth: 2015

Height: 182cm (5.9ft)

Weight: 80kg (176lb)

Team ViGIR is acollaborative US-German effort, made up of researchers from researchers fromTORC Robotics, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Virginia Tech, OregonState University, Cornell University and Leibniz University Hanover. The Atlasrobot submitted by the team, Florian, is namedfor the patron saint of firefighters. The team has focused on software -- creatingcontrol concepts that allow human operators to direct the robot underconstrained conditions.

Year of birth: 2013

Height: 193cm (6.3ft)

Weight: 160kg (353lb)

Developed by Team WALK-MANfrom the Italian Institute of Technology and the University of Pisa, WALK-MAN is ahumanoid robot with 33 points of articulation that can operate under the power of a2KWh battery unit. It's fitted with a robot perception system and protectivesoft covers that are designed to shield the robot from impacts in hazardoussituations.

Year of birth: 2015

Height: 185cm (6ft)

Weight: 120kg (264lb)

Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Carnegie MellonUniversity have teamed up for Team WPI-CMU,entering an Atlas robot named Warner. The team ismade up of undergraduate students, graduate students, professors and engineers,with a variety of expertise in robot perception, locomotion and balance,project management and software engineering.

Year of birth: 2013

Height: 190cm (6.2ft)

Weight: 180kg (397lb)

Editor's note: The DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals wereoriginally intended to have 25 entries. Team Intelligent Pioneer from Chinawithdrew its entry, Xing Tian.

You can follow the Finals on the DARPA Robotics Challenge website.